May 3, 2016

A guide to empathetic hiring processes by Karolina Szczur

During
over ten years in the tech industry I went through the hiring process
at small startups, mid-sized agencies and well-funded corporations at
least a dozen times. I’ve seen colleagues struggling when interviewing
and being under tremendous amount of stress and so was I.

At
the beginning of my career I assumed that seeking employment simply
cannot be a pleasant journey—it’s one of those situations when you grit
your teeth and push forward, looking forward to (hopefully) exciting
times ahead when being already hired.

There’s a lot of talk on company values, equal opportunity, diversity and transparency in hiring. Unfortunately it seems like even companies that are publicly known for exemplary ethics and culture make the same mistakes.
During last couple months of heavy interviewing I’ve personally
experienced unacceptably unprofessional slips and widespread lack of
empathy. Sometimes mishandling was obviously a part of not-so-great
culture but often recruitment was simply an afterthought.

The dynamics of hiring

Employers
looking for filling the gaps in human resources are naturally in a
privileged position, holding major advantage over the applicants. They
hold the power to decide who’s going to be most valuable to their goals
and needs, forgetting there’s an actual human on the other side of the
line.

The
hiring scale is tipped in employers favour. The fact that finding a
great fit isn’t a single-sided operation and means living up to your
values even before new employee joining sadly slips unnoticed.

Nowadays
in the tech industry more senior, experienced candidates, feel
comfortable and empowered to not to take on recruitment processes that
seem unfair, too long or lacking in transparency. Even though, that’s
still a very privileged position to be in.

Changing these dynamics is a hard problem to solve, but we definitely can improve and make hiring processes more humane, as they should be in the first place. Having had said that, let’s dive into what the common missteps are and how to avoid them.

Define clear expectations and process

It’s
a common problem to struggle with defining what skills are needed and
what type of people would make a great addition to a given team. There
are several reasons why that is happening:

job
ads are written based off other companies’ postings, which might relate
to a similar role, but reside within entirely different context — this
leads to ads that over-emphasise common buzzwords/patterns and
misrepresent real needs

individuals working in given roles aren’t involved in defining what’s necessary to get the work done,

career
openings rely on specific technology not necessarily willingness to
learn, collaboration skills and other character traits that are more
important, especially long term.

Building teams and products strongly relies on clarity in understanding the necessities, context and future goals.
Expectations have to be transparent and customised for each use case
(organisation) and even more importantly base off character traits a
little bit more than learnable technologies.

Doing
that alongside with describing the hiring process in detail, in the
open, will filter out candidates, who’d realise it’s not a good fit
early on and by proxy show respect to everyone’s time.

Keep job postings up-to-date

Startups are especially prone to exponential, rapid growth but it’s no excuse for keeping up ads for positions that have been filled long time ago. In
all cases it’s a waste of candidates time, and oftentimes, on larger
scale, weeks waiting for an answer simply saying “we’re not hiring right
now” or never receiving one at all.

There
are multiple solutions, the easiest one being accepting accountability
for weekly or bi-weekly quick check-up whether everything’s up to the
minute.

Over-communicate, especially when it’s hard

Usually
there’s a fair bit of back and forth when interviewing, unfortunately
the communication lapses when it’s crucial. Delayed in reviewing a code
test? Notify the applicant. Can’t make a decision to hire when you
promised to? Notify the applicant immediately. Employers often fail to acknowledge these breakdowns in communication are a major stress cause to future team members.

Being upfront about the state of the process is even more important when the company decides not to proceed. We’re dealing with two cases:

obvious mismatch between the opening and candidate’s skills on applying initially,

rejection further in the process.

Ideally
in both cases you’d be given reasons why it’s not a good fit, but
looking realistically at number of applicants in some places and
available bandwidth simple email saying “Unfortunately, we can’t
proceed” is better than silence. While over-communication is key,
over-promising lets people down and sets them up with expectations that
are far from reality (ever got one of those emails saying “check back in
couple months”? We all know how that ends up going.)

Over-communication sheds additional light and empowers to make the decisions important to careers and make them quickly.

Use inclusive language

In
the male-dominated tech industry often job ads are written using
exclusionary language sub, or consciously, perpetuating sexism. When composing a career posting make sure not to make any gender assumptions.

Moreover,
don’t facilitate unrealistic expectations by referring to people with
“ninja”, “guru” or “wizard”. That approach has been dubbed a dark
pattern long time ago but keeps resurfacing. In professional settings, we’re dealing with people, not mythical creatures. Additionally, that language is alienating for less senior developers or designers.

Gear up for better company culture

These
are only a few pointers to multidimensional process that hiring is, but
I strongly believe, from both the position of employer and employee,
that taking these steps leads towards more empathetic approach.

Have
any tips on how empathetic hiring is implemented at your organisation
or stumbled upon great examples elsewhere? Comment on the post or tweet
with #empathetichiring.